The present invention relates to a radio access point testing apparatus and a method of testing a radio access point, and more particularly to a radio access point testing apparatus and a method of testing a radio access point in a mobile communication system.
In operating the mobile communication system, the stability of the system is one of important factors. For the stable operation of the system, it is required to prevent the occurrence of any failure leading to a system operation stop, and also to promptly detect the failure and resume the system operation in case of the occurrence of the failure. Accordingly, the failure detection circuit of the radio access point and a diagnostic method therefor are very important.
A transmitter and a receiver are mounted in the radio access point. The failure detection of the transmitter of them can be incarnated comparatively easily in such a way that part of a transmission main signal generated by the transmitter is branched and then monitored. In contrast, the failure detection of the receiver cannot be incarnated merely by branching and monitoring part of a reception signal. The reason therefor is that the power of the reception signal which is inputted to the receiver fluctuates every moment in accordance with an installation environment, the number of connected access terminals, etc., so a threshold value for deciding whether a reception power value is normal or abnormal cannot be determined. Accordingly, the failure detection of the receiver is generally incarnated in such a way that any known test signal is inputted to the receiver so as to monitor the reception state of the receiver.
The diagnostic scheme of the receiver is broadly classified into two schemes, depending upon a method of generating the test signal. One of them is a scheme wherein part of the output signal of the transmitter mounted in the same radio access point apparatus is branched so as to use the branched part as the test signal. This scheme is also called the “loopback test”. The other is a scheme wherein a test signal generator for outputting the test signal is mounted in the same radio access point apparatus. Neither of the methods, however, cannot perform a measurement in remote and on-line fashion.
A technique for confirming the normality of the radio access point remotely and on-line is disclosed in, for example, Patent Document 1. The technique is a method wherein a telephone within an operation center connected to a network including the radio access point apparatus, vocally communicates with a portable terminal within the access point, via the network, thereby to test the access point apparatus and the network. Besides, Patent Document 2, for example, discloses a technique wherein a similar test method has been expanded into a method of confirming the normality of a packet data call processing function, not the vocal communications.
[Patent Document 1] JP-A-2000-332679
[Patent Document 2] JP-A-2002-271280